An evolutionary game approach for private sectors’ behavioral strategies in China's green energy public–private partnership projects

To improve sustainable energy utilization and production, the green energy public–private partnership (PPP) projects are supported by the government which encourages green power generation and selling, and attract the private sectors’ attention. To ensure the project success, analyzing the willingness of the private sectors participating in the project and investigating their behavioral strategies become crucial and necessary. This paper uses the evolutionary game theory to explore the behavioral strategies of private sectors from the perspectives of green energy generators and sellers, considering multiple influencing factors during green energy production in a PPP project. An evolutionary game model to investigate the relationship between stakeholders is established. The evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) are calculated and influencing parameters are discussed. A numerical simulation is performed to quantify private sectors’ relationship and behavioral strategies. The results indicate that private sectors’ cooperation strategies are affected by basis payoffs, social and environmental benefits, subsidies, cooperative incentives, transaction costs and the government punishment, and their strategies can be changed by controlling the initial cooperative probabilities and parameters. This work provides a decision-making approach for private sectors to determine the appropriate cooperation strategies when participating in a green energy PPP project. © 2021 The Author(s)